8. This

7. Burke’s Death

Because few things are more satisfying than watching Paul Reiser die. Especially when Burke was a horrid little weasel, we needed him to be Alien chow.

6. Anytime Newt was in trouble, with extra points to the floating doll

In Jurassic Park, we were all rooting for those annoying kids to get eaten by dinosaurs. Thanks to the good casting and acting of Carrie Henn, we actually wanted Newt to survive. I still scream when she’s trapped in the bay sleeping with a loose facehugger. But when that xeno tail comes out of the water behind her, well, none of us were certain Aliens wouldn’t cross the “kid boundary”.

5. I Spy the Xeno

I love when worlds collide, and when Danny Glover walks into Predator’s ship in Predators 2, there is a xeno skull hanging on the trophy wall, pre-AVP movies. You can imagine my delight when I realized Prometheus was an Alien prequel of sorts, as I knew nothing of the film before I saw it.

4. Bishop’s Sacrifice

3. Where is it?

2. Get away from her, you bitch!

As mentioned in #6, Newt was one of the few movie kids we actually cared about. When Ripley came out in the suit & shouted this iconic line, you knew the battle royal of cinematic history was about to begin.

1. WHAT IS HAPPENING????????????????????

I cannot explain the shock of this scene to newer audiences who probably knew of its existence through the myriad of parodies since Alien’s original release. We did not. The genius of this scene pairs John Hurt’s incredible performance paired with Veronica Cartwright’s screams of terror in the background making it one of the scariest scenes ever to grace the silver screen.